Love in dark places

It had been the longest day.

I’d been working at a fetish club that night – mostly faffing around backstage and some wild and hilarious dancing with the other models before we had to be on stage. One adrenaline-fuelled catwalk later I find Kristan, and we leave to go to another party. When we get there we lightly mingle. We do illicit things. He fucks me in a sex swing in almost pitch blackness. Pulls my bodysuit aside and rips a hole in my tights to get to me. I can see the lines of his face almost chiselled in sharp relief from the tiny side-light on the floor. He looks menacing standing above me, like the villain in a graphic novel. We can hear people outside the door. The clinking of the chains is almost in time with my moans. 

When we get home we push, we pull, we tangle. We curl up into each other, speak soft nonsense, tell stories, melt into each other’s skin. I kiss his hair soft, soft, soft. When we fuck it feels like it encompasses everything about us, the way substance-assisted sex often does. I feel wanton and say things which are often difficult to verbalise sober. We talk filth at one another in hissed, urgent whispers and sometimes I can’t quite hear him and I’m not sure he always hears me but it doesn’t matter. We know. Everything slows down. Afterwards I have tears in my eyes and we are holding each other so tight. My fingers pressed so deep into his skin, like I want to leave permanent impressions there. I ache because of all the things stuck in my chest I want to say, but can’t. It doesn’t matter. He knows.

It’s 7am before we get into bed proper, and I’m still restless and a bit manic so I leave him and go smoke out the window of the spare room. It’s a bright frosty morning and someone is out for a run. Unsettled, I return to bed. Slide in next to Kristan. He’s facing away from me but I ask him to hold me and he does. We lie like that for a few hours, him asleep, me not quite, but drifting into enough of a doze that I’m not really conscious.
I must have drifted a little because I’m woken by the feeling of his hand underneath my pyjama bottoms, his wrist resting lightly on my stomach as he rubs his fingertips gently over the top of my cunt. I whine fuzzily. He’s not quite brushing my clit, but the motion is maddeningly repetitive and I’m exhausted and craving more sleep. I roll over, blocking access to his hand. He moves it round, slides it over my arse, continues to stroke me from there. Fingers moving back and forth, back and forth. I wriggle, try and shake him off, make plaintive noises and move away in the bed. He pulls me back, holds me against his chest, his movements more aggressive now. Traps my leg with his knees so I’m open to him again and puts his hand back where it was. Rubbing now the length of my cunt, fingers dipping in. I struggle limply, and utter my first “No” of the night. 

There will be many more.

I am too tired, too half-asleep and confused to properly resist. He pushes me down, holds me down, fucks me. I whine, I struggle, I repeat no over and over again, at one point I try and pull myself away up the headboard only to be pulled back down. He ignores most of my no’s. Occasionally tells me I don’t get to say no. That this is what I’m for. He puts his hand over my mouth for a while. Grunts with satisfaction as I whimper in genuine distress. When he comes his hold slackens momentarily and I try and scramble away but he again pulls me back tight against his body. I don’t get to decide when this is over.

I eventually get away and curl up at the bottom of the bed, foetal, feeling cold and dead. Like a stone. I lie there for what feels like forever. Like a dog, he said afterwards. I get up. I wander around the flat unsteadily, touching things. I hug my cat.

When I get back in bed I’m hesitant. I feel small. He is lying there sleeping and it would be a lie to say all the bad feelings, the upset and the hesitancy disappear – they do not – but they lessen, I soften. I scooch up against him, head on his chest and my body pressed up against his, huff sleepily on his shoulder as I wrap my arms and one leg around him. “Good boy,” he tells me, and I’m not sure as he says it if he is asleep or awake.